The Political Nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lithuanian Perspective

Abstract

The article attempts to provide a theoretical model for the term of the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; to disclose its historical sources, development, structure and dynamics, the content and forms of its expression in the public life; to indicate its peculiarities, identify factors which determined its character and its associations with processes in the Central Eastern Europe; to provide arguments for reasonable application of the term political nation in social studies of Early Modern period.
The political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is understood as a unique socio-political community, members of which participated in the public life by various means, and its composition and size changed. However, the political nation had never covered the entire nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and had never been an equivalent of the nobility. A nobleman’s status would only open a window to the political nation, but the true membership was individual and determined by the person’s will and choice of active participation in the public life of the state, willingness to take responsibility for its fate.
The membership of the political nation in question was continually changing and varied since it was joined by representatives of the Ruthenian lands which belonged to the state. Therefore, the preferred term for the description used in the Lithuanian historiography (the Lithuanian political nation) is the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It enables us to avoid identification of the socio-political community (diverse in terms of ethnicity, religion and culture) with only one Lithuanian nation as well as to attribute an aspect of modern nationalism which does not suit for the historical term of the Early Modern period. Furthermore, it provides an opportunity to understand the nature of the community which participated in governing of the state and to reveal the specific ties which united and consolidated its complicated structure.